VANCOUVER, B.C. — A farmer convicted of butchering six women and feeding them to his pigs may not go to trial for the 20 other deaths he is charged with, British Columbia’s attorney general said Tuesday.
Attorney General Wally Oppal said he will not proceed with a second trial if Robert Pickton loses his appeal of the December conviction on six counts of second-degree murder.
A second trial would serve no purpose because Pickton, 58, would already be serving the maximum sentence of life with no possibility of parole for 25 years, Oppal said.
Police say the discovery of the slain women, most of whom were prostitutes and drug addicts from a seedy Vancouver neighborhood, represented Canada’s worst serial murder case.
The judge in the first trial proceeded with just six of the 26 murder charges because he felt all of them would be too much of a burden on the jury.
Lilliane Beaudoin, whose sister is among the 20 slain women, said she’s outraged Pickton might not be tried. It only makes sense that the government should go ahead with the charges, she said.
“To me, that’s telling me I’ll never actually know who committed this crime. And I will never see punishment for my sister,” she said. “That’s injustice.”
Police also are investigating 40 other women who are missing.
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